Map: Why Port Blair Is Leading Hunt for MH370

How does India decidewho coordinates the search in the waters around its coast? It’s basically a case of who is nearest.

India controls about 4.6 million square kilometers of the Indian Ocean, which, as the map shows, are split into three zones, each monitored by separate ports.

The map above is from the Indian Coast Guard, which leads India’s rescue operations, and shows how the waters around India and the rest of South Asia are divided into search and rescue zones.

Advertisement

The world’s oceans are divided into search and rescue areas by the U.K-based International Maritime Organization, and responsibility is allotted based on proximity, said Pradeep Kaushiva, the director of the National Maritime Foundation, a New Delhi-based maritime think-tank. However, if another country’s ship is nearer in the case of a disaster, it is their responsibility to assist, he added.

“In a situation like this, the effort is to throw in all resources you have to be able to increase the probability of finding something, as it’s a race against time,” retired vice admiral Kaushiva said.

Waters in the western Arabian Sea, for instance, are controlled by coastal authorities in Mumbai, while waters off India’s eastern coast by authorities in the southern city of Chennai.

The hunt for the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 turned toward India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands earlier this week, with authorities dispatching at least six ships, two Dornier aircrafts and a helicopter to scour waters of the Indian Ocean in search of the plane that vanished early Saturday.

The area of water that Malaysia has asked India to search is around 35,000 square kilometer across the Andaman Sea, according to Indian navy officials. That’s about 400 times the size of Manhattan and about 28 times the size of New York City. Authorities in Port Blair, the capital of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are responsible for rescue and relief efforts there.

“It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack,” C. Uday Bhaskar, a retired Indian Navy commodore and former director of the National Maritime Foundation, said of India’s hunt.

About India Real Time

India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.